If you set Stephen King to writing for The Sopranos, you might well end up with something like Dolan’s Cadillac. Based on a story King did in his Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection, Dolan’s Cadillac is about a mob boss who kills a man’s wife.  The man, naturally, follows up for revenge.  Which, admittedly, does not sound very Stephen King—the car doesn’t run by itself, the wife doesn’t come back from the dead, and absolutely no ghosts or aliens are involved—but Stephen King’s done some more action-themed stuff in the past, so Dolan’s Cadillac doesn’t surprise me one bit.

But can it make a movie?  That’s the question on my mind.  Though Christian Slater, Emmanuel Vaugier and reportedly Dennis Hopper are involved, I’m not sure a lesser-known Stephen King title from his lesser-known genres is the best route to go.  Especially with so much good still out there, like “The Jaunt”—now that was cool. 

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For the longest time, we’ve all been somewhat in the dark as to what Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell, his first original horror film since Army of Darkness, was going to be about.  Oh, sure, we were all looking forward to it regardless of what it was going to be about because we’ve got a whole lot of faith in the man not to botch things beyond all recognition.  That and most of us are STILL quoting from Army of Darkness—aren’t we, Mister Fancy Pants?

But now we’ve got word on the plot! And it’s a doozy, too—think Stephen King’s Thinner, except the gypsy is denied a loan instead of getting run over by a car.  Man, you’d never think those gypsies were so DANGEROUS!

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Your mother always warned you about getting a tattoo, and that morality play carries on in the Thai horror series Art of the Devil. In fact, in the Thai series, tattoos were downright killer as the kids were getting the new, all-the-rage tattoos that turned out to be magical symbols that killed. Frankly, it’s not all that unlikely—think about all the stupid tattoos people get and tell me it’s not likely! Anyone else remember the stand-up comic who talked about the guy who got the Chinese symbol for “Tranquility”, only what he actually got was a Chinese symbol that advertised his sexual proclivities?

That’s cleaned up significantly for a family audience, kids, but the point remains. And the thought that somewhere out there might be a tattoo that’ll kill you is shockingly plausible. And that is why I remain tattooless to this very day.

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In a move that leaves me somewhat unsettled, the upcoming Clock Tower movie is getting a fresh director in. Martin Weisz, who had a hand in The Hills Have Eyes 2, will be helming the project following the departure of three other candidates, dismissed for largely unknown reasons, including visions not meshing well twixt the director and the studio.

And so they bring in the guy who gave us the truly craptacular sequel to the truly craptacular remake of a truly craptacular film…and expect us to be squealing with joy? I’m astonished beyond all reckoning. In fact, I’m having an increasingly hard time seeing how this can be any good. How? How can it? I mean, granted, the Clock Tower series was a freaky set of games, and Scissorman practically made for a horror franchise, but can the strength of the script unaided by any kind of directorial skill still be good?

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This…this is just great news, right here. The single biggest horror bomb on the face of the earth, Fear Itself, has been delayed. Pushed back one week to a premiere date of Thursday, June 5 on NBC, this move shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

I’m on record several times: I think this show is a gargantuan mistake that will hemorrhage cash, frighten small children (only), and bruise fruit. We’re doomed. It rained cheese last night…the Black Squirrel has been seen as far afield as Luton…dogs and cats, living together…real “end of the world” type stuff.

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Well, kids…bad news coming out our way from Grudge 3 director Toby Wilkins, who gives us a serious bummer. Apparently, early reports that Judd Nelson and William Devane will be involved in Grudge 3 have been greatly exaggerated. Indeed, they will have absolutely nothing to do with it.

But there is some good news—Wilkins and company are taking the canon of the Grudge series very, very seriously by the look of it and are picking up almost exactly where the second one left off. Grudge 3, you see, will be about a Japanese woman with the secret to ending Kayako’s two-film reign of terror, and wiping her freaky ghosty self off the face of the earth forever. Thus, she goes to a haunted apartment building in Chicago—EXACTLY where the second one ended!—to finish the job.

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I’m really rather baffled about how this actually came to pass. Howie Mandel, whom you’ll likely not remember at all before he shaved his head and took over a game show, is executive producing a project called “Kill Switch”. It’s about a woman who can transfer her consciousness into the bodies of people about to be murdered.

If this sounds somewhat familiar, it should, and with good reason. Much the same as “Child’s Play”, the franchise-starting classic about a serial killer who, through voodoo capabilities and the nigh-constant invocation of the voodoo god Damballa, managed to transfer his soul around from body to body to doll and then failed to move to another body. Oh…and guess who’s writing the script for “Kill Switch”? Who else?—“Child’s Play” writer Don Mancini.

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So Fox Atomic, the guys who’ve given us some truly relentlessly bad movies, have managed to pick up their act a little bit and offer us something a little more lit’ry for our viewing pleasure.

Having optioned the rights to the Kathryn Mackel book “The Surrogates”, we’re in for a real surprise. The plot is where you’ll really freak out—try this out for size: The Dolans, Kyle and Bethany, are looking to have a child, and decide to go with a surrogate mother to ensure the last best chance at getting the job done. The Dolans sign on a med school student named Laurel Bergin, believing her to be perfect in every possible way.

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Lars von Trier has been playing things very close to the vest of late—in fact, until just recently, all most anybody knew about his latest project was that it was going to be about the Antichrist. But now, we know a few more things than we did, and what we’ve found out is pretty interesting.

First, von Trier, in something of an appropriate move, is going back to Germany to film his Antichrist film. He’s got a pair of distributors already lined up, one to handle German distribution and another to handle international sales. The plot, meanwhile, is absolutely guaranteed to piss off right-wingers and anybody even vaguely Christian. A couple heads for a cabin in the woods following the death of their child. Along the line they’re likely to discover that the world was in fact made by Satan.

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So color me hubris, kids, but considering that Botched hasn’t even been out all that long isn’t a good sign that they’re talking sequel already.

Okay, granted…the first Botched sounds like it’s a real winner, even if it isn’t the easiest thing to find. I haven’t spotted it in any video stores around here, but that could be just because I live in the middle of nowhere. Yet even my middle of nowhere town commands a couple Movie Gallery stores, and for it to not show up there is not a good sign.

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